According to the ninja handbook, when faced with an enemy beyond their ability to defeat, a ninja's first priority was to preserve their life and bring intelligence back alive. Sometimes, even if sacrifices had to be made, they were worthwhile as long as the intelligence brought back could save more lives.
Every Konoha ninja present understood this principle, and as members of the logistics department, they understood it more deeply than most. There did not seem to be many Kirigakure ninja before them, but their behavior marked them as scouts. In other words, more troops were following behind.
Even if they wiped out every Kirigakure ninja in front of them, they might still find themselves surrounded, with no way out. In the end, they would have given their lives for nothing.
Thus, none of them rushed out recklessly. Instead, they cautiously watched the enemy, trying to determine how many Kirigakure ninja were following behind. But the available clues were far too vague. To learn more, they would have to get the information from the Kirigakure ninja themselves.
The usual approach would have been to capture a Kirigakure ninja and extract intelligence through genjutsu or other means. Worried about alerting the enemy, however, they held back and considered how they could capture one for interrogation.
"If only all of us could use genjutsu. We could make them think there were more of us and hold the Enemy Forces back for a while," one of them whispered.
During the First Shinobi World War, Senju Toka, a genjutsu expert of the Senju Clan, had excelled at precisely this tactic. Genjutsu had no tangible destructive power, and techniques that could kill someone directly were almost nonexistent. At most, they could cause a mental breakdown, leaving someone effectively incapacitated. Genjutsu had always leaned toward a